The present invention relates to an information receiving and recording/reproducing apparatus and particularly to an information receiving and recording/reproducing apparatus and method for protecting the copyright of received information by limiting devices enabled to be used for reproduction of the received information recorded in advance.
As described in "The Journal of the Institute of Television Engineers of Japan", Vol. 47, No. 4 (1993), pp. 494-499, there have been proposed systems called "pay per view", "video on demand", etc. in which software information for audio, video, etc. is provided in the form of multichannel information so as to be transmitted to respective homes by wire or wireless in accordance with subscriber's request.
In the aforementioned systems, received software information can be recorded/reproduced by a digital information recording/reproducing unit such as a digital VCR, or the like, without deterioration of quality particularly in the case where the software information is transmitted as digital information. It is therefore essential to protect the copyright of the received software information.